"Looking at his entire record, they felt he had a clean record before this incident and that entered into their judgment"

TRENTON — All it took was a phone call, and the New Jersey State Police were at their beck and call, ready to provide a celebrity, professional athlete or any other VIP with an escort — wherever they needed to go.

That’s according to a retiring state police sergeant who led a high-speed caravan of sports cars to Atlantic City in an incident that became known as "Death Race 2012."

"I’d been sent to Philadelphia, Manhattan, numerous times in marked cars to pick up NFL players, teams, friends of NFL owners and ownership," Nassry said, estimating that over the 26 years he had been a trooper he provided hundreds of escorts.

Nassry, 48, of Phillipsburg, spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday at a meeting of the State Police Retirement Board, where he was pleading to keep his full pension. He admitted in March that he had used black electrical tape to alter the license plate numbers of his troop car to conceal his role in the March 30, 2012, caravan.

He was sentenced in May to one year of probation and 75 hours of community service, and he accepted a permanent ban from any future law enforcement or public employment in the state.

After hearing from him and deliberating behind closed doors, the four-member board said Nassry could keep his retirement, although at the pay grade for the reduced position of staff sergeant. As a result, he will be eligible for an annual pension of about $68,000 rather than nearly $80,000.

"Looking at his entire record, they felt he had a clean record before this incident and that entered into their judgment," William Quinn, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said.

But it wasn’t talk of Nassry’s retirement that had the few people in the small meeting room in Trenton hanging on his every word. It was Nassry addressing his own crime and a State Police culture, he said, that led him to believe it would be perfectly acceptable to lead dozens of exotic sports cars at speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour on a 130-mile excursion.

Nassry said he had become "the go-to trooper for NFL games," providing escorts for VIPs before and after Jets and Giants games in the Meadowlands. Escorts "were ordered all the time and still are today," he told board members, some of whom appeared taken aback but who later declined comment.

Sometimes there were memorandums ordering escorts for this person or that person, he said, and at others there was no paperwork at all.

"As far an escort for a member of an NFL team, if someone called me during game day or the day before from Meadowlands Stadium State Police Office … we did the escort," Nassry said in an interview during a break in the hearing. "We didn’t do a report on those. You just did it."

It was in that role that he came to know Brandon Jacobs, a former running back for the Giants who requested the escort that would lead to the downfall of Nassry and a subordinate, Trooper Joseph Ventrella of Bloomingdale, and the transfer of several high-ranking troopers.

Nassry said Jacobs called him and said, "Can you help us out with a couple of our boys?"

He said he expected there to be a half-dozen or so cars going to Atlantic City, but that when he and Ventrella met Jacobs in Fort Lee, there were "25-plus high-line vehicles sitting in the parking lot by Starbucks."

"And I thought, ‘Oh, crap,’ " Nassry told the board, noting "that’s not really" what he said. "But I decided we better escort this group to the Garden State Parkway, being such a large group."

From there they headed to the New Jersey Turnpike before ending the first leg of their trip at the Cheesequake Service Area on the Garden State Parkway, where they were met by 15 more sports cars, he said. He said he still thought he and Ventrella could handle the group.

"Obviously, I realize now I was very mistaken," Nassry said. "Due to lack of manpower, we weren’t able to handle this escort in a safe manner."

The ride through New Jersey led to complaints from the public. Witnesses said they watched as the two patrol cars, with their emergency lights flashing, led dozens of Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other vehicles, all with their license plates covered with tape, at startlingly fast speeds that one person estimated at 110 mph.

Nassry, who acknowledged being "fully responsible" for what happened, admitted Tuesday he had come close to those speeds as he fought to keep the group together and prevent them from tailgating.

But the trooper said covering his license plate had to do with internal politics — avoiding conflicts that can arise when venturing into other troopers’ turf without notice. He denied ever telling the civilians to cover their license plates. And he said that had more officers been present, the escort would have gone off without a hitch.

"We were undermanned," he told the board. "Lack of manpower. If we had three or four more troopers, we wouldn’t be sitting here. There wouldn’t have been one driving complaint about people going too fast, passing them."

A State Police spokesman declined to comment Tuesday.

After The Star-Ledger reported on the high-speed caravan to Atlantic City in April 2012, the division toughened its standard operating procedures concerning escorts, although they are still allowed.

"The state police do conduct escorts, pursuant to comprehensive protocols and procedures, none of which permits the type of criminal behavior at issue here," Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office, said of the escort led by Nassry.

Still, Nassry said the vast majority of escorts in his years as a trooper were done at high speeds.

"Trooper escorts, in my time," he told the retirement boards, "were done for one reason: to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible."